1973-12-06

This is The Latin American Press Review, a weekly selection and analysis of news and events in Latin America as seen by leading world news sources, with special emphasis on the Latin American press. This program is produced by the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group of Austin, Texas. 

Excélsior of Mexico City reports that opinion in Latin America is divided on the effects of the reduction of Arab oil production. For 48 hours after the announced reduction of oil production in international economic circles, it was considered very unlikely that Latin America would suffer effects of the energy crisis. It was noted that the countries developed industrially in the region, such as Mexico and Argentina, are almost self-sufficient in petroleum. The only exception would be Brazil, the principal importer of hydrocarbons in the Latin American region. 

However, according to Excélsior, the director of the Mexican oil concern affirmed that Mexico cannot withstand a world energy crisis, although it would not be affected in the same manner as other countries. In Venezuela, with less optimism than the international economic circles of Buenos Aires, authorities of the Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons are studying the shortages in countries such as Brazil and Colombia. It was indicated that there are cases in Central America in which electric plants and hospitals could be closed for lack of fuel. 

According to Excélsior, in Argentina, the State petroleum monopoly assured that the country can be self-sufficient in fuel for 15 more years, although the volume of reserves necessitates the search for substitutes already. Venezuela, the principal producer and exporter of petroleum in the region, is being pressured by its regular customers, the United States and Europe, to not reduce its normal deliveries, which reach the neighborhood of 3 million barrels daily. The United States is the principal purchaser of Venezuelan petroleum. 

The Venezuelan minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons noted that his country is actually almost at the limit of its extractive capacity. That is, there is no possibility that Venezuela can increase its production. The reserves of the country decrease at the rate of 1,200 million barrels annually. 

According to Expreso of Lima, Peru, in Peru the possibility is now under study of reducing the consumption of petroleum used in the industrialization of sugarcane production. Also, the price of gasoline will be increased. The Lima paper Expreso, which is the voice of the Peruvian government, recently accused monopoly producers in the capitalist system for the actual crisis in petroleum. 

Expreso emphasized that the United States has calculated reserves for 60 years and can at this moment satisfy its internal demands, but the monopolies live at the expense of resources from other countries and prefer to unleash a crisis now in order to later obtain more profits, according to Expresso. The world petroleum crisis should be thus more a political emergency than an economic one. According to Expreso of Lima, Peru, and Excélsior of Mexico City. 

International political difficulties were also raised by the domestic turmoil in Chile. Excélsior reports that an incident last week involving the Swedish and French ambassadors had caused international problems. 

The incident, according to Excélsior, occurred when an Uruguayan woman in Chile had just been operated on in a Santiago hospital. She had been granted asylum by the Swedish ambassador and safe conduct for the medical operation by Chilean authorities. Trouble arose when the Chilean military officials came to arrest the woman. 

Both the Swedish ambassador and the French ambassador, who was also present, protested and were dealt with harshly by the Chilean military. The Swedish ambassador was beaten with fists and kicked, while the French ambassador was held at machine gunpoint, while the woman was dragged from her hospital bed and arrested. 

Also, a group in France has protested the unexplained disappearance of 20 doctors in Chile. Excélsior also reports that a black colonel in the United States Army who had been appointed as the military attaché to the American Embassy in Santiago was suddenly replaced by The Pentagon when it was learned that the Chilean Junta would object to the appointment of a Black to the post. 

Excélsior also reports from Chile on the death of Daniel Vergara, a former minister in the Unidad Popular government of the late president Salvador Allende. Vergara's death, which was reported by the Unidad Popular government in exile from Rome, was due to gangrene in the arm. He reportedly died in a prison camp in Chile. Vergara was remembered as one who had been in the presidential Moneda Palace with President Allende when the president died. 

Finally, from Chile, two short economic briefs. Excélsior of Mexico City reports that the Junta has agreed to pay the Kennecott Copper Company $300 million for property which was nationalized by the Unidad Popular government. The British Newsweekly, Latin America reports that representatives of Pepsi Cola have visited Chile to discuss the possibility of setting up bottling plants for the export of Chilean wine to the United States. 

Claridad, a weekly Puerto Rican newspaper, reports the settlement of the 25-day strike against the 13 campuses of the University of Puerto Rico. The 45,000 students and workers evidently won an impressive victory relative to the Administration, which had been controlled by the Puerto Rican Council of Higher Education. The strike succeeded in establishing a special committee to make recommendations subject to student, faculty, and worker approval regarding worker and student and faculty participation in the selection of the university president, chancellors, deans and other administrators, and the duties of the security forces and the working conditions of the staff. 

The strike thereby reestablishes the importance that having a people who work and learn at university determine university policy rather than having some appointed administration determine education. According to Claridad, the committee developing the recommendation for the future structure of the University will consist of six student representatives, 12 professors, and representatives from the brotherhood of nonteaching staff and the union of university workers. 

According to Claridad, formerly all rules and regulations were made by the appointed Administration without any student, teacher or worker participation. According to the strikers, the general rules and regulations were designed to perpetuate the educational mediocrity that results from banning anything of controversial nature and in keeping wages low. Some local newspapers had warned and tried to picture the whole situation as simply a problem of wildeyed revolutionaries out to destroy the university. 

According to the independent newspaper Claridad, the victory of the faculty, students and workers over the appointed Administration was due to the high degree of unity achieved between the professors, students, and workers in the face of the necessity of developing an affirmative educational program. That from Claridad of Puerto Rico. 

Excélsior reports that in Honduras 20,000 teachers have added their support to the growing protest against the two-week old Gag Law. This law makes it a crime to distribute news either within or outside the country that is falsely exaggerated or that puts in danger or deteriorates the national economy or public credit. Violators of the law are subject to a prison term of one to three years and a fine of $250 to $1,000. 

The 20,000 members of the Honduran Teaching Association sent a document of support to the threatened reporters represented by the Honduran Press Association. The Press Association has appealed to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. This report is from Excélsior of Mexico City. 

The Miami Herald reports an special from Montevideo, Uruguay, that following the recent military government's seizure of the university there, the government appears to have removed almost all opposition. In mid September, the generals permitted student selections at the university. The result was a victory for the Frente Amplio, a leftist coalition of parties whose leader in the presidential elections of 1970 is now under house arrest in rural Uruguay. 

Informed sources here in Montevideo note that there had been more or less a tacit accord between the new student leadership and the government that barring violent demonstrations, the 120-year-old autonomy of the campus would be respected. In sending troops into the campus and in rounding up leftist student leaders and faculty, Uruguay's military leaders seem to have broken their side of the bargain. 

The Miami Herald special continues that, furthermore, this year inflation in Uruguay will reach about 80%, and owing to the economic stagnation of the past decade, Uruguay now has a foreign debt hovering near the $1 billion mark. Production on the nation's fertile pasture lands of cattle and sheep is still stagnant, though recent sharp increases in prices paid for beef overseas have added dramatically to Uruguay's earnings. Still many of the nation's most highly-skilled workers are migrating to the cities of southern Brazil and to Buenos Aires across the river in search of opportunity. That from The Miami Herald. 

Updating the previous article and indicating that the military seizure of the university failed to summon opposition, Excélsior on December 2nd reports from Montevideo, Uruguay, that the government outlawed all political parties, except the Christian Democrats, and outlawed labor unions and student federations, proscribed their newspapers and seized their offices. 

According to Excélsior, hundreds of soldiers and police, other combined forces, were deployed on the highways and were searching all vehicles to prevent the escape from the country of the leaders of the outlawed organizations, but officially only one arrest was reported, that of the editor of the newspaper El Popular, which is the organ of the Communist Party. The editor was detained when security forces occupied the newspaper's offices. 

Uruguay remained without media outlets for the left. Of the four papers still being published in the country, only El Día could be considered an opposition periodical, although very moderate. The ban was signed by president Bordaberry. The official statement accused leftist organizations of following a policy contrary to the representative, republican, democratic system. 

The communist and socialist parties were accused of being for a number of years inspiration and instruments of subversion, and sustained that Marxist ideologies created an artificial class struggle to destroy national unity and the economy. The Communist Party, founded in 1920 and declared legal three years later, was one of the most important in Latin America and had 70,000 members. Its organ, El Popular, began publication in 1958. 

After the military takeover of the government last June, the paper was suspended on various occasions for up to 60 days. The Communist Party began recently to publish under another name, Crónica. Both papers have been suspended. 

According to Excélsior, now only Última Hora and Ahora of the Christian democrats are appearing. The government has declared illegal the National Confederation of Workers and arrested the president of the opposition party Frente Amplio. That from Excélsior. 

Excélsior reports that the Ford Motor Company in Argentina has evacuated its 22 remaining American executives with their families after receiving death threats from guerrillas. Ford officials were convinced that the threats were meant seriously after the ambushing and killing of Ford executive, John Swint, recently. The leftist guerrilla group, Peronist Armed Forces, threatened to kill the remaining Ford executives one after another instead of kidnapping them and asking ransom. 

The outbreak of organized guerrilla kidnapping and killings in recent months, according to Excélsior, has both Argentine and foreign businessmen worried. The heads of all the automobile manufacturing plants in Argentina, both native and foreign, appealed to the minister of interior for more security measures to protect their plants and employees. The minister promised to double the security forces around the factories and to take special measures against terrorist activities. 

Excélsior also reports that Kurt Schmid, the Swissair executive who had been kidnapped on October 22nd, was released again after an undisclosed amount of ransom was paid. Schmid, the general director for Latin American of Swissair, left the country immediately. Meanwhile, the political warfare between left and right factions in Argentina continues. This report from Mexico City's daily, Excélsior. 

You're listening to The Latin America Press Review, a weekly selection and analysis of news and events in Latin America as seen by leading world news sources, with special emphasis on the Latin American press. This program is produced by the Latin America Policy Alternatives Group. Comments and suggestions are welcome and may be sent to the group at 2205 San Antonio Street, Austin, Texas. This program is distributed by Communication Center, the University of Texas at Austin.

The views expressed are solely those of the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group and its sources, and should not be considered as being endorsed by UT Austin or this station. 

This week's feature on popular armies in Argentina provides a background scenario for the present political situation in Argentina. There, despite Perón's return seven months ago, class struggle and guerrilla warfare are on the increase. The feature is extracted from a research article by professor James Petras. 

Dr. Petras, professor of Sociology at the State University of New York, has specialized on Latin America and has published numerous works on Latin America, including "Reform and Revolution". 

In June 1966, general Juan Carlos Onganía seized supreme power in Argentina. In the subsequent months, general Organía proceeded to send the troops into the universities, purging all leftist, progressive, and reformist professors. Though Onganía came to power with the tacit support of a substantial sector of the National Peronist Trade Union bureaucracy, he proceeded violently to repress strikes, intervene unions, and jail or fire thousands of Trade Union militants. Strikes by petroleum, railroad and port workers were smashed. 

Government-subsided functionaries took over the unions. US corporations and especially banks moved into Argentina in mass. Scores of banks and large industries were denationalized while unprofitable enterprises like the sugar mills of Tucumán were abruptly closed down without compensation or consideration for the thousands of sugar workers thrown out of work. Even their meager subsistence earnings were lost by the Tucumanos. 

Doctor Petras continues that these workers of Tucumán were the first to crack the social peace imposed by the Onganía dictatorship. Throughout 1967 and 1968, mass marches of hungry unemployed sugar workers because daily occurrences. Municipal offices were attacked, the sugar mills were seized, and the old Peronist bureaucrats were replaced by more revolutionary, socialist, and Peronist leaders from their rank and file. 

The dictatorship sent in the Army, but social violence became as routine as its repression. All of Argentina became aware that Tucumán was burning. The confrontation between workers and the dictatorship was prolonged, but without the support of the trade unions in the great industrial centers, the struggle was doomed to failure. The sugar centers stayed closed. 

Many unemployed sugar workers migrated to Córdoba or Buenos Aires. However, out of this confrontation between the workers and the military, many militants concluded that the masses needed a revolutionary armed force, that under conditions of dictatorship there was only one road; the immediate organization of an underground people's army linked to the workers trade union and revolutionary struggles. 

Some of the key military cadres of the People's Revolutionary Army, the ERP, which emerged in 1969 and 1970, were former militant leaders of the sugar workers. 

Early in 1969, on the surface it appeared that Onganía had once again regained complete control of the situation. Strikes were few and trade union officials were eating out of his hand. Onganía's law and order was praised by United States' investors as a model for Latin America, but in one year this scenario was completely destroyed. 

In May 1969, one of the most massive industrial uprisings in the hemisphere took place in Córdoba. Subsequently, two union officials who collaborated with the government were shot and five major guerrilla organizations and innumerable commando groups multiplied the armed actions, disturbing law and order on a daily basis. 

The "Cordobazo", as the Córdoba workers uprising of May 1969 is commonly referred to, was a spontaneous explosion of hatred toward the Onganía dictatorship for the decline in wages, the police state repression, and the 1,001 indignities that the regime had imposed on the wage in salaried classes, according to James Petras. 

With Onganía's image of law, order, power, and stability severely shaken, the military chiefs met and decided that it was necessary to sacrifice the man to save the system. A new general was called in. In June of 1970, Marcelo Levingston replaced Juan Carlos Onganía as the military's choice as president of the republic, but changing generals and making minor concessions to labor demands did not lessen the tensions. 

Three nationwide general strikes in October and November were totally effective. Nine general strikes in Córdoba during the first five months of 1971 in which everyone from auto workers to shoeshine kids down their tools were unnerving to the government. 

In March of 1971, general Levingston appointed a Reagan-type governor in Córdoba called Uriburu, the 18th governor appointed in five years. In his first major declaration, Uriburu declared that the forces of law and order must cut off the head of the subversive serpent. Within a week the workers took to the barricades, and for 48 hours the streets were in the hands of the people. Córdoba police disappeared. When law and order reappeared, it was in the form of the federal police, flown in from Buenos Aires. 

At the funeral procession of one of the two young workers killed by police, the flag of the underground guerrillas, the ERP, flew from a motorcycle manned by two militants. After days of massive student fighting with 30,000 angry workers marching, no public official dared to move to arrest these ERP militants. The banner of the flag draped the casket of the 18-year-old worker. The Uruburu fell with great grace, and Levingston was replaced by General Lanusse. 

The new president was aware that most Argentinians had had enough of generals in power. He legalized all the political parties, proposed free elections in three years, and promised ex-President Perón a safe return to Argentina. In exchange for these concessions, he trusted Perón would help pacify the country. 

According to Dr. Petras, today there are at least five major guerrilla groups. The Revolutionary Armed Forces, the FAR, the Montoneros, the Peronist Armed Forces, the FAP, the Argentine Liberation Forces, the FAL, and the People's Revolutionary Army, the ERP. In 1970 alone, these and other commando groups engaged in at least 175 actions, which ranged from train assaults in the style of Jesse James with two variations. 

They distributed sweets to calm the children, and they did not rob the passengers but only the government and corporate funds to expropriating milk and meat trucks and distributing these goods in the slum settlements that surround the big cities. 

According to James Petras, the FAR was the Argentinian guerrilla formed to link up Che Guevara's Bolivian guerrillas and was organized about the time of Onganías' coup in 1966. With the assassination of Guevara and the defeat of the Bolivian guerrillas, the FAR went into a period of internal discussion, surging forth once again with the Cordobazo of 1969. In the past year it has moved from Fidelista to Peronist politics. 

The Montoneros are made up of ex-right wingers and Social Christians who have embraced the national populist movement of Perón. Politically, they are the most ambiguous and moderate of the guerrilla groups, although they have tactically resorted to political assassination, including former President Aramburu, who was responsible for the execution of 27 Peronists in the 1950s. 

The FAP is the armed wing of revolutionary Peronism and is probably the largest of the armed Peronist groups. The three, the FAR, the FAP, and the Montoneros, are presently discussing their fusion into one Peronist guerrilla organization. The FAL and the ERP are the two non-Peronist, more Marxist guerrilla groups, neither having any identification with either Peking or Moscow. 

The FAL was founded in 1962, but its real growth and activity occurred after the May 1969 Cordobazo. The ERP, the last of the major guerrilla groups to be organized in 1970, is probably the fastest growing, most active and popular. The ERP has the clearest notion of how to link the guerrilla struggle with the growing working-class movement, according to Dr. Petras. 

As the military has lost all shreds of prestige among the middle class and even sectors of the upper class, it never had much popular support. The guerrillas have increased their attacks. In January and February of 1970, eight actions were carried out. In the same months in 1971, 108 actions were carried out. Between January and August of 1970, 85 armed actions were recorded. Between September and December, 175 actions took place, and between January and April 1971, 201 actions occurred. 

Few people sympathize with the government. Hardly anyone reports any suspicious activity, even in wealthy barrios. The military officials wear their civilian clothes to and from the office. The killing of policemen or military officials does not arouse middle class indignation. Many middle class professionals have commented, "If the military want to rule by violence, then they are getting their answer." Of course, the guerrillas have paid a price. Over 200 are in jail. All have suffered hideous tortures and over two dozen have been killed, but the organizational structures are intact and the armed movement is growing. 

Dr. Petras continues that reflecting its growing political and military capacity during the months of March and April 1971, the ERP engaged in 36 identifiable actions while the other guerrilla groups carried off 19. The ERP has organized a variety of actions designed to strengthen the organizations economically and militarily, to win political support among workers and lower classes, to demoralize the opposition and to strengthen the struggle of the workers' organizations. The ERP is a self-financing organization. It does not depend on funds from outside or foreign sources, but relies on the expropriation of banks and other financial institutions. 

On the 12th February 1971, two commando groups of the ERP carried off the biggest robbery in Argentine history, taking $30,000 from a US-made supposedly bulletproof armored car, penetrating it with a bazooka. Twelve days later, the same two commando groups distributed in various lower-class barrios of Cordoba a water pump, a water tank, overalls, schoolbooks, blankets, medicines, and milk. 

The expropriated funds not only sustained the ERP activists, but resulted in a redistribution of the income from the upper to the lower class. More frequently, the ERP hijacks milk or meat trucks and redistributes the goods directly among the poor, many times with the tacit support of the truck drivers. Often the guerrillas, after identifying themselves, do not have to pull out their gun. The drivers only ask, "Which neighborhood today?" 

Within the slum settlements, distribution committees have emerged to direct the distribution of goods. The two most common means of obtaining arms are by disarming policemen or assaulting police commissaries. 

According to Petras, entering a police station today is like entering a rat maze. Inside a series of barriers and outside checkpoints with barbed wire manned by nervous machine gun carrying police. Naturally, after scores of incidents, the police are jittery, and therefore it is not recommended to slow down or park in front of a police guard. 

During contract negotiations between the Fiat Corporation and the trade unions, the ERP applied pressure on the company negotiators by firebombing their offices, and have taken similar actions with other recalcitrant employers who, as a result, are more amenable to negotiate settlements and rely less on the dictatorship to break strikes. 

This week's feature was provided by Dr. James Petras, widely published specialist of Latin America, and professor of sociology at the State University of New York. 

You have been listening to The Latin American Press Review, a weekly selection and analysis of news and events in Latin America, as seen by leading world news sources with special emphasis on the Latin American press. This program is produced by the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group. 

Comments and suggestions are welcome and may be sent to the group at 2205 San Antonio Street, Austin, Texas. This program is distributed by Communication Center, the University of Texas at Austin. The views expressed are solely those of the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group and its sources, and should not be considered as being endorsed by UT Austin or this station.